CYBORG HAVEN 2.0

CYBORG HAVEN 2.0
5 YEARS ON THE INTERNET

Monday, July 30, 2012

MY JAK X: COMBAT RACING DISC HAS THE MEMORY CARD GLITCH


It happened.  Again.

And I found out I’m not the only one with this problem.  Many other players of Jak X: Combat Racing had this problem as well, preventing some of these guys from ever playing the game or forcing them to buy another copy.  I read the reviews for the game from Amazom.com, and then the Wikipedia page for Jak X to learn more.

I was one of those people who, for some games, HAD to get it soon after it was released in stores.  Jak X was one of these games.  I was excited about it being a nice change from the adventuring that was in the Jak and Daxter trilogy.  I’m not interested in ANY other racing game.  This game was the only racing game I would ever buy, because it had a story and the lovable, familiar characters I’ve come to know sharing the story together.

I played the game into 30% of its completion.  There were no saving problems.  Then, one day, after leaving the Garage part of the menu, the Save icon didn’t go away; it kept on flashing.  I went to the Stage Select screen and it was still flashing.  I played one race, and the entire time the Save icon still flashed non-stop.  I made a mistake of trying to save the game manually while the game was trying to save automatically, and it just froze up the progress.  I didn’t know what else to do; the only way to get out of it was to reset the game.  It corrupted my card, everything that was in there: Chaos Legion, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak 2, Jak 3, my progress for Jak X, Sonic Mega Collection Plus, all of it.  Finished games, gone.

So Tuesday I try Jak X again.  I got through the tutorial all right.  Then I finished one full race, in which I earned a Silver Medal on the first try.  Then after saving, I wanted to check the garage, since I got two new vehicles.  The game auto saved, even though I did not make any changes to the race car whatsoever.  And the Save icon kept flashing.  And kept flashing.  And kept flashing.  I stood up from my seat and paced around the room figuring out what to do.  I haven’t backed up the data from Jak and Daxter R2 and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier.   I was afraid I was going to lose data again.

Funny what happened though.  I tried to Load my profile to hopefully “counter” the stuck-on-auto-save mode.  I left it like that for over thirty minutes.  Nothing changed, and I had to reset the game or nothing else would happen.  But actually, when I browsed the data in the memory card, the data was still readable.   The first time Jak X corrupted my data, the data files in the memory card showed up as gray cubes and a verbal indication that the data was corrupted.  The PS2 did not recognize the memory card’s data and the icons for each game didn’t show up.

This time, the data icons DID show up:  for Jak and Daxter: TLF, Jak and Daxter, and Jak X.  It was a relief to see that two of the icons showed Daxter and Jak X had its title logo there.  I may have saved my game data from a horrible fate.

I would buy another copy of the game but I want to see if I can do what Wikipedia suggests for this particular “Memory Card Glitch.”  Keep the memory card out and just put it in when you want to save, and then save it manually from the Main Menu screen.  I wouldn’t mind doing that; the auto save feature just doesn’t help for this game exactly like it should, huh?

Meanwhile, if the data for Jak and Daxter: TLF is okay, I should back it up somewhere else and delete it from this memory card so that this glitch won’t happen again.

Here is the link to the Wikipeida page for Jak X: Combat Racing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jak_X:_Combat_Racing

Go to the section that says “Autosave Memory Card Controversy” and read up on it.  If this happened to you, I suggest following the “workaround” advice.  It may be a bother, but at least you don’t have to go buy a new copy of the game, and you can keep your currently non-corrupted memory card.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

I Want to Play Journey…

This video game is just something I don’t think I should miss out on.  Unfortunately it is a PlayStation Network game, not a console game, and I DON’T HAVE A PLAYSTATION NETWORK ACCOUNT.

I’ve known about Journey for a while, and when I first saw videos of it (E3 or some other program like that), I was mesmerized by the desert terrain and the music.  The video game is about a light-weight, cloth-garbed character (which you control) whose story is to go on a journey to reach the mountain with light behind it.  But it is far away.  You can choose how you can get him there; as straight-forward as you want, or stop from time to time to enjoy the sights, explore the terrain or remnants of a village.  You can go alone or if you find another traveler, you may make a companion out of him and journey together.  On PSN, it would be possible to find others playing at the same time, even several players at once.

What is interesting about this game is that there is no spoken dialogue… which is fine, because I think the game doesn’t require a scripted dialogue anyway.  I think it is still possible to communicate with the other travelers.  According to a comment about the video game’s soundtrack on iTunes, you may communicate with Morse Code if you are familiar with it.  This makes me want to learn Morse Code, just to be able to do this… or just because I’m curious.   It is another language to learn.  I mean another alphabet to learn.  Better not make that mistake.

There is hope yet.  I found out that there is a Journey soundtrack available in iTunes, and I put it in my wish-list already so I don’t have to find it later.  I listened to a few music tracks from this album and oh my goodness, the music is so beautiful, I just want to imagine myself travelling around a desert as the background music plays.  I decided to look up this game on Amazon.com and I discovered that there is going to be a video game collection for the PS3, called the Journey Collector’s Edition.  The description on the page says that it includes three full games from thatgamecompany : Journey, Flower, and flOw.  I hope this means that I can play this game without needing to have an account for Playstation Network.

Unless…that just means that whatever parts of the game that had to be downloaded are all included in the game, except—and this kinda breaks my heart—it still might be a one-player game after all if I don’t have the internet on the PS3.  If I wanted to experience other Journey characters, I would have needed to sign up for a PSN account and WiFi this and Internet that, and I just don’t want to deal with that mess.  That’s me, anyway.  So, it turns out that I might make this journey alone.  Hmmm.

I like journey stories.  I have a couple of novels that are journey stories, in which the main character or characters are on a journey to a certain destination, and events and emotions happen along the way that make them grow as a person, and be enlightened and even at peace.  I am drawn to that kind of stuff.  Even Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was a journey, in a way.  It was certainly an adventure.  So the video game Journey is—what can I say—the very journey game I’ve been waiting for?
You can find a trailer of Journey Collector’s Edition on this Amazom.com webpage.  It is located under the image for the product.   Here's the link: Journey Collector's Edition